End of season solar trailer tour

GeorgiaCycle

Just Joined
Sep 4, 2023
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WOW I only found your post halfway through and am amazed !

Not sure what we will do whilst waiting for the sun to come back and more :)

Do you promote your journeys or are they more your own private adventures ?
 

matthewslack

Esteemed Pedelecer
Nov 26, 2021
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WOW I only found your post halfway through and am amazed !

Not sure what we will do whilst waiting for the sun to come back and more :)

Do you promote your journeys or are they more your own private adventures ?
Just my own take on low carbon travel in a fairly northern latitude!

If you search the forum for 'solar trailer' there are other threads covering most of my solar miles since the start in March 2022.

In winter I choose my weather carefully, and instead of solar, I carry multiple batteries and two fast chargers, and eat in cafes and pubs twice a day while charging.

Good luck with your own plans. Just get started is my advice, you soon learn what you need!
 
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Ghost1951

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Jun 2, 2024
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If enough people look long enough for UFOs, somebody will see one and tell their friends about it. The military can then pretend that they have man-made secret aircraft based on UFO technology that they reverse engineered. That's in the hope that their enemies will believe them and be too scared to give them aggro. Some are probably stupid enough to fall for it. After all, you can see how many people believe in Aliens.

You have to ask yourself why do the BBC keep recycling the old videos "leaked" from the military, who say that they have no idea what the thing on the video is, when they've all been debunked and explained by rank amateurs on youtube.

This was the last one, though the BBC have repeated other previous ones since. debunking the green triangles starts about half-way through:

It's a bit like climate change. Any climatologist knows about Milankovich Cycles and other climate cycles. They're very consistent, and they show that the CO2 levels match exactly with temperature. Some years ago, politicians and other tyrannists figured out that the cycles were all ascending, so both temperature and CO2 were going up, and they could blame it on normal people and use it to leverage their tyrrany. People are very religious, so they accept these new religions extremely easily. You could say that they're gullible, but pride prevents people from accepting that.
Yeah, releasing 32 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide a year from fossilised carbon has no effect at all, does it?

Co2 is still a trace gas in our atmosphere, but there is no doubt at all that along with other factors such as the Milankovitch cycles and solar radiance, it does have significant effect on the temperature of land, air, and oceans. We are heading towards having doubled the carbon dioxide content of the whole atmosphere in about 150 years and will likely reach that double figure in the next thirty years. Over the last half billion years the planet was mostly quite a lot warmer than it now is, because as someone rightly said above, the earth is in a coolish period right now with polar ice caps ad glaciers elsewhere, but while I don't believe the hysterical hype of the more ecstatic , 'Two years to save the planet,' loons, there is no doubt at all that the planet is warming and that warming will change things to the disadvantage of our food production and environmental conditions. The question is how much will we need to adapt, and will warming cause positive feedback such as release of presently locked down methane in tundra regions and methane clathrates under the sea. Methane is a much more potent warming gas than co2 and there are large amounts of it locked in cool tundra landscapes and under cold, polar seas. If these were released into the atmosphere by warming, I don't think it would suit our food production systems very well.

Would it mean the end life on the planet? Certainly not. There was more than abundant life in the Cretaceous era when the average temperature of the planet was 35C and not 15C like now, but it would not be life like us. Above 40c, human life becomes difficult and if your body temperature gets to 42c you will likely die pretty soon, and a body temperature of 44 is always fatal to humans. A global average temperature of 35c like that of the peak of the Cretaceous period, would mean that most of the earth would be deadly for animals like us.

Whether this happens or not depends on whether methane is released in large amounts. The scheduled next ice age won't save us either. It isn't going to happen for about ten thousand years.

Variation in mean global temperature over the last half billion years.

59520

Our species evolved and prospered all over the planet during a cool period. It is not at all clear that we would do well in large numbers on a hot one. All the indicators are the other way. The most poverty stricken and dire places on earth are the hot places.


Temperature graph from NOAA the US Govt. Climate and oceanographic body.

What's the hottest Earth's ever been? | NOAA Climate.gov
59521
Climate.gov Home
http://www.climate.gov
 
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Ghost1951

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Jun 2, 2024
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What a huge adventure Matthew!

Hat off to you sir, for a tremendous effort and achievement.

I am wondering what percentage of your energy input on that outfit comes from your own muscle and how much from the sun. Is it possible to estimate how much is solar and how much is Matthew?

In the end of course, all muscle power and fossil energy too is solar, because all of it comes from the sun, one way or another, even if it goes through plants and animals as food, or as primeval plant sludge forming into oil and coal fifty million years ago.
 

matthewslack

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Nov 26, 2021
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What a huge adventure Matthew!

Hat off to you sir, for a tremendous effort and achievement.

I am wondering what percentage of your energy input on that outfit comes from your own muscle and how much from the sun. Is it possible to estimate how much is solar and how much is Matthew?

In the end of course, all muscle power and fossil energy too is solar, because all of it comes from the sun, one way or another, even if it goes through plants and animals as food, or as primeval plant sludge forming into oil and coal fifty million years ago.
Yes, that was a great adventure, just enough jeopardy to keep it interesting.

I'm a few days away from setting off on this year's equivalent trip, hoping that the better weather in the distant part of the forecast comes to pass. I have a bomb proof trailer axle now, using aluminium tube with twice the wall thickness.

My torque sensor bike adds a fixed percentage of my efforts to the total power, and very roughly I think I do half the work in Eco/level 1, a third in level 2 and a quarter in level 3. In good conditions, which I had for most of that trip, I cruise in level 2 at 12mph average speed.

I would say it was 67% sun and 33% Matthew, overall.
 
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peterjd

Pedelecer
Sep 18, 2019
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Love it but too difficult for me to cope with in a wind. And I crave my creature comfits too much I suspect. o_O

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Ghost1951

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Jun 2, 2024
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Love it but too difficult for me to cope with in a wind. And I crave my creature comfits too much I suspect. o_O

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That tiny caravan trailer is a fine piece of design thinking.
 

matthewslack

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Nov 26, 2021
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I have thought of trailer tent concept to get more space without excess weight. But I really like the connection with outdoors and other travellers that a small tent brings, despite its privations.

A couple of recent camp spots, and a non-functioning squirrel.

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guerney

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Sep 7, 2021
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That tiny caravan trailer is a fine piece of design thinking.
Lighter than my 15.5kg steel folding Homcom bicycle trailer.


I have thought of trailer tent concept to get more space without excess weight. But I really like the connection with outdoors and other travellers that a small tent brings, despite its privations.
It's connection with ticks which worries me. Used to do a lot of camping when I was younger and loved it, but I have friends with chronic and highly debilitating problems caused by tick borne diseases, which has put me off. Therefore that trailer single person camper form is appealing.
 
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